At the Regenerate Devon Summit in July 2020, which brought together 644 participants from all over Devon, the chat window was on fire during the session hosted by Rob Shorter from DEAL. The same happened during a follow-up session with Ilektra Kouloumpi on the Amsterdam Doughnut.

The Bioregional Learning Centre (BLC) posted an invitation on the Regenerate Devon platform to meet online during lockdown for Coffee and Doughnuts, intrigued by the challenge of Planning, Making and Sharing a People’s Doughnut for Devon. These collective working sessions were described as “amazingly collaborative”. The Devon Doughnut Collective was formed. We started out with 4 Doughnut enthusiasts and now we’re up to over 170!

Originally conceived as 6 sessions in October 2020 the idea was simply to see how far we could get towards a first iteration of a Devon Doughnut. Each session was loosely structured and facilitated by BLC, with local guests like Manda Brookman/Permanently Brilliant, convener of the very first Doughnut Hack in Cornwall in 2018, Peter Lefort, Impact and Partnership Development Officer at University of Exeter (developing the SW Climate Action Network) and Andy Goldring, Permaculture Association CEO, and ‘Our Future Leeds City Hub Coordinator’. Participants represented themselves as individuals, sharing their experience.

First we identified the challenge, wrote up a working statement of purpose and principles, and discussed the pressing issues relative to each domain, such as Health & Wellbeing or Equity & Equality. Then we dug into indicators, invited groups/initiatives like the Devon Carbon Plan to “Meet the Doughnut” The slide deck on the homepage tracks our progress. Our co-design platform on Mural is here. Over the course of just one year we successfully created ‘health indicators’ for 22 domains and 44 ‘pathway for action’ projects–pathways for both citizens and policymakers.